Stampede
– Gal'darah summons a Rhino Spirit which charges a player, inflicting Physical damage and knocking them into the air.

Whirling Slash
– Gal'darah spins around in a whirlwind of steel, inflicting Physical damage to all players within 5 yards and causing them to bleed for additional Physical damage every 3 sec, for 6 sec. While using Whirling Slash, Gal'darah's movement speed is reduced by 65%.

Puncture
– Gal'darah thrusts his spear into a player, bypassing armor and inflicting Physical damage. In addition, the target will bleed for additional Physical damage every 3 sec for 2 min.

Comments

Comment by ArgentSun

Without deep testing, here is what I can tell about the fight:

It's mostly tank and spank. Gal'darah will charge random people during his troll phase, and will cast a form of Whirlwind - doesn't hurt too much, but make sure your melee gets out of it. His charges also cause knockback and lower the aggro of the person that's being knocked, so tanks, be ready to taunt after one of those.

Halfway through the fight he will transform into a Rhino, and will cause occasional bleed on some people - raid warning will announce it. Healers may need to toss an extra heal on the people that are bleeding, but it's not all too bad.

Comment by Depaftw

On heroic mode after we wiped a few times the best tact we found was the tank to be on the corner right after the fencing were the tablets for the quest are and the dps be behind that corner in around 15-20 yard from the tank stuck on the fence this way u will avoid charges and stomps and it will be a prety izi kill but it requires lots of healing and good tank.

Comment by Mith

No noticable difference on Heroic. Make sure you kill Eck the Ferocious (extra boss on Heroic) first, and make sure you get spit on (frontal cone attack) so that you get the Residue debuff, which has no effect positive or negative.

Defeat Gal'darah as normal with this debuff for the extra achievement.

Comment by rosencrants

On heroic his whirlwind has a stacking debuff that causes massive damage if you don't run away from him. first time i tanked him his debuff ticked for 10400 dmg(5 stacks i think). Tank him with your back to the altar to avoid knockback. When he whirlwinds run to the side and kite him. He moves slow during whirlwind. When it ends run back to the altar.

Bring a good healer. Ours wasn't very good so our feral druid respecced resto to help out. We downed him pretty easily after that. I had 565 defense and 28k hp buffed.

Comment by locriani

Heroic Strategy:There are two distinct phases to this fight. It basically becomes a collapse / expand set of maneuvers, and will really stress your healer. Let me reiterate: THIS IS A REALLY HEALING INTENSIVE FIGHT.

Long Version:All Phases:Gal'darah will randomly summon a ghost rhino that will charge a target and knock him / her back. This will interrupt your spellcasting. This ghost rhino is not targetable.Phase 1:Spread out. Ranged DPS and heals should be at max range. Gal'darah will be in human form. Have your tank position him at the altar, so Gal'drah is facing the altar at all times. Gal'darah will whirlwind periodically, have all melee DPS and your tank run out from this as it applies a stacking DOT that can get really nasty (~10k / s after 5 stacks). He also randomly applies a debuff that reduces healing received, but this is easily ignored.There also appears to be some sort of group wide damage he tosses out this phase, but it's not nearly as significant as the damage from whirlwind.

Phase 2:Collapse in. Gal'darah transforms into a rhino, massively increasing his damage output and his total health. He also will randomly impale a target, which stuns them and deals around 7-10k damage over 10 seconds, mitigated by armor - so keep an eye out, and if you are the healer, make sure that you and the tank are topped off the entire time! He also thunderstomps, causing AoE damage and a movement speed debuff.Collapsing is extremely important during this phase as Gal'darah will melee you for about 30k before armor if he has to charge to you (for another 4k before armor) to reach you for impale (another 7-10k). If this happens to anyone in your party, that person WILL die.

He alternates between phases, and it should take about 2 or 3 phase switches before you down him. Any more, and you probably don't have enough DPS for this fight.

Short Version: (TL;DR)Gal'darah alternates between two phases.Phase 1: Stay as far away from him as you can if you are ranged, melee and tank run from whirlwind.Phase 2: Collapse! Heal the target of the impale, and expect big hits on your tank. Rinse and repeat.

Comment by Aestu

On heroic mode, this guy hits like a truck in rhino form - 6-8k a swing on a full 80 blue tank. Healers need to continuously spam their biggest heals on the tank.

The Impale is Physical. Hand of Protection will remove it, and paladins should BoP Impaled players to save the healer mana.

Anyone have confirmation on whether Stoneform works?

Comment by mordon

He does an enrage when he goes into Rhino mode, have a hunter tranq or a rogue use anesthetic poison on him to lower his dps a bit.

Comment by ocping

Comment by Sydien

Comment by Eminence

i'd very much recommend, that you use all cooldowns when he turns into a rhino. its clearly the most intense part of this fight (on heroic anyways)

Comment by Exsel

Druids!

Innervate will be removed if u get impaled

Comment by Serathis

Disarm works on him. Drops his damage by about 50%. Also, when in rhino form, he enrages. Use TRQ shot or ana poison to remove enrage. Other than that, just nuke, dont get WW and use hand of freedom and stoneform on impale. Every man for himself does not remove impale.

Comment by phennexion

After about 3 or so wipes, with a group :

2 MagesProt PallyRet PallyHoly Pally (1750sp / 31% crit )

(pug)

Found out that it's a SUPER healing intensive fight and i had the ret switch off from DPS to Heals and the fight became SUPER easy, cause i wasnt wasting my heals on the dps gettin smacked by whirlwind and the aoe shockstomp thingy.

Comment by Bogsie

The impale mechanic seems bugged to me. He sometimes (and somewhat frequently) manages to get a melee hit in before actually impaling his target. Standing close or far away hardly seems to matter - I've seen people get the melee hit while being far away from him, and I've felt it myself while being right next to the boss. It kind of reminds me of how Al'ar used to oneshot people after doing his charge attack. Having clothies get (nearly) instagibbed, and having just about anyone being instagibbed on a melee crit just doesn't feel right.

Comment by sanicek

If you have a Death Knight, using Army of the Dead to soak up the mammoth phase helps immensely.

Comment by mike2022

If you have a hunter in your group, have him pop off his Tranq shot whenever it is up (15 sec cd) during mammoth phase.

Comment by Vashar

My group tried for the Share the Love achievement a half dozen times and got to know this guy well.

In Troll form, he's relatively weak. He can be disarmed, but immune to stuns. He casts Stampede which summons a rhino that charges a random person, knocking them back about 20 yards and dealing moderate damage. He does a Bladestorm-like ability that causes a bleed effect that deals 1k dmg every 2 secs for a total of about 6-8 seconds if you are hit by it. It stacks, so it's possible that you'll see 5+ stacks on all your melee DPS if they stay in range of it. He also does another bleed which has a Rupture icon that does about 1k dmg a tick and lasts over 2 minutes and also stacks.

After a set amount of time, he transforms into a Rhino. He hits for about 7k on a Warrior tank in this phase. In Rhino form, he jumps straight up and lands with a shockwave, knocking anyone nearby 20 yards away from him. A few seconds after the "stomp", he will choose a random target (except for highest on threat) to be impaled and ride on his horn for a few seconds. An impaled person can be saved early with Hand of Freedom and possibly Hand of Protection. He also will Enrage which increases his attack speed by 125%. The tank should save his defensive "cooldown abilities" for each Enrage. He normally enrages twice per Rhino phase. Enrage can be removed by a Hunter's Tranquilizing Shot and maybe a Rogue's Anesthetic Poison (and early versions of a DK's Heart Strike will negate the bonus speed, but not remove it).

The way I did it is tank in the center and allow the stomps to knock me back, giving time for the enrages to expire (they last about 8 seconds). This notably helped my survival chances if the healer was impaled.

I didn't get the achievement, but learned that as a tank and being highest on threat, I couldn't be targeted for his impale. There's speculation that he impales the closest person after doing a stomp. I will try it again with a back-up tank and test this rumor at the same time and update this post if it proves to be true.

Comment by Samax

After spending 2 hours /facedesking over this achievement, my group and I came up with a few conclusions...

There is no way to force specific people to get impaled. The people who claim that this is true, only received lucky RNG. Here is what our group did that failed, and what we ended up doing that didn't fail as much.

We thought that by using an off tank to start the fight with only the healer and main tank running in, would allow the main tank to get impaled first. The healer (resto shammy) would stand at max range (40 yds). Unfortunately, due to many RNG fun-times, the shammy would get the impale first, ending in a very messy wipe. We then realized RNG took part in the encounter. We could not effectively force the boss to impale a certain person. (Unless the Main tank could heal the Off tank until the Main tank got impaled on the first rhino phase, but then RNG would affect everyone else once they got into combat.)

Strategy:Our DK started the fight, with everyone who had a healing spell healing him. Run away from the whirlwind as a tank, easy enough. During rhino phase, tank him with your back against the wall and have your raid stand on the tank. The knockback will then do nothing, and the impale will do insignificant damage. (The further you are from the boss after the knockback, the harder the impale will own you if he chooses you). Rinse and repeat until the Main tank gets the impale, then swap tanks and get the Off tank impaled. Once this occurs, have no pity and destroy his very soul.

Side Note: Rogues can use Anesthetic Poison II to remove the Enrage Effect during the rhino phase. (Hunter's tranq shot works too) This saves the healers from burning mana into the tank and stops him from doing 125% extra damage to his target.

~Samax, Lightbringer

Comment by IronLionZion

Where is his ability list?

Comment by wsuhoey

He doesn't appear to have any magic abilities.MAGES: Consider using Amplify Magic.

Comment by Pengwuino

Does anyone know how to get the sounds from this guy? I love the "Say hello to my BIG FRIEND" yell!

Comment by Wildsoul101

Anyone got sound scripts? :)

Comment by j2k339050

Stick together! in the general area. when he whirlwinds all run in one group following the tank who should lead him to a wall. stay against the wall and tank him with the rest of the group against the wall as well. when he turns into rhino form theres no knockback effect cause your against the wall. took us a while to get it. Just dps him him down and if whirlwind comes up again either run to another wall or tank try to position your self do you are against a the same wall. It is also possible that the tank can take the full force of WW effect with heals on him. just throw up shield wall and dodge/armor trinkets or something.

Comment by PizzaMan

Sometimes you just die and there's nothing you could have done to prevent it.

If you're a clothy and get unlucky RNG, it's possible for Gal'darah to charge and crit you for over 30K before you can get into position for the rhino phase.

Quite lame if you ask me.

Comment by DavidForthoffer

On heroic, as an 80 blue healer druid, I was impaled. I instantly clicked Barkskin and the damage I took was modest.

Comment by Brunk

Just finished this Heroic fight with a well geared priest healer a good geared tank(me), and 3 MELEE dps. 3 Wipes later, we finally beat him. The DPS gets totally eaten by his whirlwind. Beware of bringing more than 1-2 DPS to this fight.

Comment by DemonsDontDream

Is this guy broken or something with the latest patch? I tried doing the 'What the Eck' achievement, and this guy one shot me on his impale. He did a melee hit on me for 18k, 2k more than my max health

Comment by TweetyGirl

I discovered a bug on my priest. I was holy spec. I got hit with impale and ended up dying, and my Spirit of Redemption went off. When it ended, I was dead, but the animation of my body was me standing still a few feet above the boss. Wherever the boss went, I went. I couldn't release my spirit, and the druid couldn't battle rez me. Even when everybody died and the boss reset, I was still following him around, floating next to him.

I ended up having to relog, then I could release my spirit and run back, but it's just something you might encounter.

Comment by DrPwnage

During The Fight He Says "Say Hello To My BIG Friend"This Is From The Movie Scarface. Tony Montana Normally Says "Say Hello To My Little Friend"